copyrights

[donter]

Having some problems with the US copyright office I am about to drop a CD and they send me E-mail saying they can't process it because it's out of date. Went back to check out my 5 other registrations and their there, but don't show all the songs. Now is there a better way to protect the songs

[keith.rogers]

You post is unclear.

First disclaimer, you should probably talk to a lawyer about this (IANAL), or someone at CD Baby, distrokid, et al, if that's what you're using.

But if you could make it clearer, it would probably help. Have you already submitted successfully some of the songs, and just trying to complete a submission you started but never finished for the rest? What kind of submission, PA or SR? Etc.

[Mr. Jelly]

I used to copyright whole CDs as one piece of work. It would be impossible for them to copyright parts of a piece of work or half. But that was some time ago. For some reason I never had to go to court to protect my property.

[Earl49]

My understanding (probably imperfect) is that you can copyright each song, or a whole CD collection with several songs. The down side of the whole CD approach is that copyright searches are based on individual songs, so some songs may not show up in a search that someone might make. But you only pay one fee for the whole CD, instead of one fee per song.

[donter]

yes I have submitted 3 or 4 songs at a time 5 times successfull, with the knowledge only one song can be used with each copyright. But now they have changed the procedure you can only do it online, hence the problems. No more sending in a CD with a list of songs. Is there another way of protecting songs besides the poor man's copyright which is not admissible in court.

[rick-slo]

You can copyright up to ten songs (if you are the solo creator) under a single copyright (one copyright fee instead of ten).

[Gordon Currie]

Just pony up the money and get it done. If your songs aren't worth spending relatively little money on, then why even worry about it?

[keith.rogers]

Originally Posted by rick-slo

You can copyright up to ten songs (if you are the solo creator) under a single copyright (one copyright fee instead of ten).

Seems to me it's not restricted to solo/sole authors, but all the individual pieces have to have the same copyright owners. The individual works all have to be unpublished for this (PA) submission, IIRC.

Originally Posted by donter

yes I have submitted 3 or 4 songs at a time 5 times successfull, with the knowledge only one song can be used with each copyright. But now they have changed the procedure you can only do it online, hence the problems. No more sending in a CD with a list of songs. Is there another way of protecting songs besides the poor man's copyright which is not admissible in court.

As noted above, you can submit *up to* 10 songs and each will be listed in the copyright, but they have to be unpublished, all with the same owner.

You can still submit a SR for the whole CD, but the PA for for individual works as a compilation is just online. I'd make friends with someone that has a computer. I mean, you created a CD somehow, and plan to release it, so there must be a computer around somewhere?

P.S. No, registration with copyright.gov is the only way to insure you have any kind of recourse with statutory penalties, if that is truly a concern. There are a lot of folks that do not worry about this, to be honest, but if you think you have something worth protecting, you have to spend the money. They have made it possible to do yourself, at least, though it's, admittedly, tedious and still horribly slow.

[donter]

Thanks for the input how true more money out the odds of anything happening to them is small to none but I am just good enough to make it interesting.